My Grandfather Told Me To Eat Flies

My Grandfather Told Me To Eat Flies

...a very short story by Alexander Zenon Efstathiou (Eustace) 24th December 2017

When I was a toddler, coming close to my fourth year, apparently I gave the adults a hard time with my undisciplined imagination. My oupa (grandfather) must have suffered from the same affliction, for he loved making up stories that do not make sense.

Sometimes I believed his stories and sometimes I did not. This time, I did.

He took me out to the garden and impressed by his solemn manner, I obediently sat on the grass as instructed and waited to hear of magical people or places. This time though, he told me he has something important to tell me about myself and my frog.

“What frog?” I demanded.

He looked aghast. “Has nobody told you how your mind works and where you get ideas from?” I shook my head. “Well, you are getting to be a big boy and it is time you are told - don’t you agree? Are you old enough?”

After being vehemently assured that I am a big enough boy to be told the truth, he leaned forward and confided to me the big secret. “Each of us, every person in the world, we have a tiny creature that lives inside our head. There are many kinds of creatures…for instance, mine is like a tiny cockroach and it loves eating sugar - you have noticed how I eat tons of sweets and sip condensed milk all the time? That is why my little cockroach is healthy and runs around non-stop, filling me with ideas. Other people, like your uncle Lindros, he has a sluggish lizard, which is why he talks so slow and never has any clever ideas of his own.”

He paused to give me time to absorb his ideas and then, just before I could ask, he told me, “You, my biggest and most interesting grandson, your creature is a frog. Haven’t you felt how it jumps around non-stop, from one idea to the next? That is why people say you have a crazy imagination, because you don’t stay with one idea long enough to think it through to the end. Do you know why your frog makes you do that?”

“No.”

“Because it is hungry! You have not been feeding it. The hungrier it gets, the more it will jump around, until it exhausts itself and dies.”

I was fascinated by the idea of a dead frog ‘living’ in my head, so I asked and he explained, “It does not have a body, like you do, the body it has is made out of ideas you did not use and they have become the kind of creature that suits you - a frog. So, here is what we must do. I’ll help make you a neat little box with a hole and a lid so that you can catch lots of flies and keep them in there for feeding your frog whenever it gets hungry.”

He leaned closer again, to stare into my eyes, “Remember, your frog does not have teeth, so you must chew the flies for it.”

At that age I lived in Africa and so I knew that flies are very dirty creatures and that I must never let them walk all over my food, so I was not happy with what I had just learnt. My little frog jumped and I had another idea.

“Oupa, if I do not eat any flies and my frog dies, will another…thing come into my head?”

“Hmm…I don’t know, it is not something many have managed. Do you think you can do it?”

“Yes. I am going to try.”

Sometimes Fate gets nasty and deals us with something called ‘coincidence’ so that we can never know the truth of a thing. Not long after, I was sent to nursery school and I was never able to work out whether my frog died or whether the school teacher managed to KO my poor imagination every time it snuck out its tiny nose, until it learnt to stay in hiding, making me think it has died.

Until I forgot about the frog, I spent a large part of my childhood with the weird picture of everyone having a creature in their head and I tried to work out what everyone has. Some of the creatures were quite fun to imagine, for it made me less afraid of those people.

I did remember to ask my oupa, “Why did you call me your biggest grandson? I am your only grandson.”

“Are you sure?” He winked and told me, “That is a story for when you are older…quite a bit older.”

When I was older, he died, so I never learnt whether he has a story to tell.

A short story, just to amuse you for a Happy Christmas.

^{Image: Pixabay}